LADIES WHO BRUNCH

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Cast

Joan Smalls as Nolita Todd

Gina Torres as Mari Sterling

Rob Lowe as Eli Dunst

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[Warning: contains non-graphic references to domestic violence]

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Nolita arrived at the Vesper Club first. She flashed her members-only app at the side door to avoid waiting in line out front and slipped inside, intent on snagging her and Mari's usual table.

It was taken.

Because today hadn't been trouble enough, with Nolita's back tires on flat first thing in the morning, and her credit card getting declined at Starbucks, she had to face her best client at one of Vesper's worst tables. The one her server led her to was near the middle of the dining room in full view of the picture windows--not much good for discreet pairs who needed to keep their association on the down low.

"Do you have anything more private," she asked before her server could offer her a choice of drinks. "My friend doesn't like attention."

Her server, a young woman young enough to be Nolita's little sister, bit her lip. "Let me talk to the hostess and see what I can do. If you need to meet your friend in one of the private rooms, that can be arranged."

"See what you can do first." Nolita flashed the girl a blinding smile that neither confirmed or denied her desire. She knew exactly what those private rooms were for; so did Mari. So did the paparazzi staked outside the front entrance. She wouldn't be the one to put Mari Sterling on the cover of Page Six for a sex scandal when she could put her on the cover for well-timed widowing.

Once Nolita had her club soda with a twist of lime, she checked her phone for messages from prospective clients. Nolita was a decoy, a beauty for hire, out to catch philandering significant others for the right price. The job was part sugar baby, part private investigator. She let rich and famous cheaters make her their new boo, soaked up their attention and bank account details, then snapped some incriminating evidence and delivered the ladies who loved them from evil. It had made her quietly notorious on Rodeo Drive, but it hadn't made her wealthy. Because when the targets were dangerously, abusively bad, Nolita didn't charge, and Hollywood was filled with some of the most dangerous lovers in the world. Her latest client was married to a prime example.

Nolita knew the moment Mari had entered the building. The wait staff and bartenders started to flutter around, moving plants and closing blinds and softening the dining room's lighting the way Mari preferred. Mari Sterling was easily the wealthiest person on the Vesper Club's membership rolls by a couple of orders of magnitude and the difference in service was obvious. Some of her wealth was a result of her own wise investments in real estate, but most came from her husband Eli Dunst, commodities trader, real estate developer, and all around cretin. Nolita had disliked the blue-eyed mogul from the first picture Mari showed her. She'd had to brush her teeth three times to get the taste of his cigars out of her mouth the first time he invited her to ride in his Porsche Boxster. He was all hands and self-satisfaction; it had never occurred to him she might say no when he was accustomed to hearing yes. She shuddered thinking about him.

Mari eased into the only other chair at the table two, her impassive gaze flitting toward the view of the Strip. "Not our usual?"

Nolita cut her eyes at the newcomers laying waste to a platter of cosmos and fried oysters at their usual table. "Just a mix-up."

"Of course." Mari chuckled as though she'd been right to expect the worst. None of this had gone to plan yet; Nolita couldn't tell her to expect any different from here on.

Still, she tried. "I've got your pictures. We can do this whenever you want."

Mari brought out her phone and they both activated mobile to mobile data sharing to make the transfer. It took seconds. Just long enough for Nolita to spy a fresh set of bruises on Mari's wrist, and the matching hand print at her collarbone. Nolita caught her hand before she could hide it.

"You ready to do this," she asked for the hundredth time.

Mari smiled sadly. "Born ready."

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Eli was waiting for Nolita in the media room when she arrived for their midnight rendezvous. The view from the Hills was sparkling, lights everywhere and ocean to spare. It was the sort of vista that made you want to run away and dream. Nolita had tried that and it had led her here.

Nolita entered the Sterling-Dunst residence with the security codes they had both provided her. Eli's turned off the security cameras his business partners insisted on while Mari's turned off the audio recording devices Eli himself insisted on. The only story left to tell after tonight would be one they wrote.

Eli met her with a drink.

"You look good," he noted, returning to his leather chair and sitting with his knees spread in invitation.

Nolita drank her whiskey like she was supposed to and struck a pose. "I always look good."

He laughed. "Don't get ahead of yourself, honey. I can have another girl as pretty as you in an hour."

Nolita swished a mouthful of Johnnie Walker Blue and shrugged. You didn't do the job Nolita did with thin skin. She didn't need to be told she was beautiful to know. She resented his insinuation that he could make her beg for his approval just the same.

"So you want me to go, then? Let you get on with your party of one and an imaginary two?

"No," he said with the easy confidence of a man who knew his word was law. "Dance for me. Right now."

Nolita danced as directed. Stripped as directed, an eye on the clock on the wall.

A series of camera flashes suddenly went off from every corner of the room.

"Haven't you heard: hush up five, a ten is talking? You should try it," said Mari as she stepped down from the stairs leading to the level above with a professional-grade camera in hand.

"What have we here?"

Nolita pulled on her dress, frantically trying to cover herself. "Oh my god, it's not what it looks like."

Mari pointed her camera at the floor and snapped another shot. Nolita's face wouldn't appear in any of the incriminating photographs; they had a deal.

"Well," Eli remarked, dryly, "I was having fun until you showed up."

Mari looked askance at Nolita. "You can go, dear. I'll take it from here."

Nolita took her cue to hide in the hall while Mari took center stage. She was strong and tall and less shrunken than his treatment had made her.

"That makes...forty pictures of you and your latest?"

He narrowed his eyes. "You won't get anything."

"I don't want anything. I just want away from you."

"You think there's anywhere you can go, I can't follow? I'll ruin you."

"You'll try."

"You'll never know a moment's peace. Anything you say...I'll slap you with an injunction so labyrinthine you'll be issuing me a public apology for every text you send."

"You won't."

"I will, Mariana. I dragged you from obscurity, I can put you back. You'll get nothing from me. You'll beg for nothing when I am done with you." He glowered at his wife like she was his enemy. One he'd created from the dust of love.

"I'm not afraid of you anymore."

"You should be. There is nothing you can do to me that I can't counteract with a call to my lawyer. I made you." He smirked. "You'll leave with nothing," he said again. "Hell, you might even owe me money before I'm done with you. Be grateful if I decide to let you go. It would spare you the humiliation of me leaving you."

"It's cute that you think you can threaten me. You know I do not respond to threats."

He was out of his chair in a flash with his hand around Mari's neck. Nolita reappeared in a flash to with an ugly lamp in hand to knock him the hell out.

Mari rubbed her throat while Nolita reluctantly took his pulse. "Appreciate the backup, dear."

"Anytime, boss."

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Eli awoke from his stupor fighting mad and tied to a chair on the marble edge of their tiered pool.

He jerked against the ropes keeping him in place and rocked the chair in his determination to get close to Mari one more time. Mari stood near the back door, watching, her expression pained, as though she was waiting for the first opportunity to change her mind.

"You sow-faced bitch, you'll hang for this."

In all Nolita's years at playing the game, the worst ones remained the worst till the bitter end.

Nolita stepped out from behind the palm trees to stare Eli in his face. She wanted him to remember her.

"Don't ever talk to her like that again."

"Nola..."

"My name is Nolita, and I'm not here for you."

"What the hell is this? Some kind of twisted revenge game? You working for her?" He sneered at the two women who would decide his fate. "You're both going down for this. There's nowhere you can hide that I can't find you, because money talks and I've got plenty of it."

Nolita had hated men who wielded their bank accounts like hammers all her life. But she hated men who turned on the women who loved them most of all. Mari had loved Eli once; everything he'd done since had taught her not to anymore.

Nolita didn't shove him in the gasoline-soaked water because of the cheating. Cheating was cruel but pedestrian; she paid her rent on cheaters. She pushed him because of the way Mari flinched at the abortive swing of his fist even as she held all the power. She pushed him for the ring of bruises visible under smudged concealer on Mari's neck. She threw in the burning match to extinguish the fear that lingered as he thrashed on the deep end.

Nolita never did it for the money.

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Eli languished beneath the fiery pool, struggling against the ropes they'd used to bind him in place. He looked pathetic, like a fish too stupid to realize it was going to die where it lived: at the bottom.

Mari gingerly touched the puffy skin around her right eye. It was still tender. Tender like her bruised ribs were tender, like her scalp where he'd yanked her back to him by her hair. Her shoulder where he'd shoved her into a wall for asking who he was planning to see tonight.

She counted the minutes till he stopped squirming underwater, hardly noticing the smell of gasoline smoke where it clouded the air. He was a prize swimmer; he could hold his breath for five minutes before the need for oxygen drove him to breathe whatever there was to breathe in.

All she felt was relief.

"The cars're outside around back. Take the blue Mustang. I turned off the GPS."

"I bring my own ride, Mar, you know that." Nolita was too smart to go down for nothing.

"Don't trust me yet?"

Nolita's eyes bore intently into the side of Mari's face. "Ask me in Nassau."

"What's in Nassau?"

Nolita squeezed Mari's clammy hand in solidarity. "Me."

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Mari waited until the growling engine of Nolita's Jaguar F-Type had vanished long into the night before she dove feet-first into the still-simmering water of her ground pool.

"Honey!" she shouted for him. The surface of the water sizzled the closer she drew to his submerged shape. He wasn't moving. Good. "Sweetie, can you hear me?" She had to play the part, in case the neighbors were listening. Play the part, Mari. You're almost free.

She took several deep breaths and dunked beneath the surface to paddle toward her husband's body. But each stroke only drew her closer to the insistent heat of Nolita's flames. It was too hot for her. She retreated immediately and threw herself back onto the deck, hissing at the already blistering patches of skin on her limbs. She no longer worried her pain would seem disingenuous.

Cursing, she rolled onto her knees and crawled the distance from the pool outside to the kitchen through the sliding door. She was bleeding from her burns, left bloody hand prints on the steps.

She sat inside on the kitchen floor for five minutes, back against her cherry wood cabinets, reminding herself of everything she had lived through. She would only have one chance to convince the police of what happened. Tears flooded her eyes and her throat tightened.

She had loved Eli for twenty years and he had turned their happily ever after into misery.

Mari brought the phone close to her bruised eye and dialed 9-1-1.

"Nine-one-one. What's the nature of your emergency?"

"Someone--" she cut herself off. She was too calm. Too collected. She didn't plan this, she reminded herself. They did it. They did this. "Please," she cried. "They came into my home and hurt my husband and me. I'm so scared. I don't know if they're coming back for me. Please, please send help." Mari hugged her blistering forearms to her stomach. They really were beginning to hurt. She poured that pain into her voice. "Hurry."

"I've dispatched all available units to your address. Are you in a safe location?"

Mari gazed upon the multimillion-dollar beach house she had lived in for the entirety of their unhappy marriage. Everywhere her eyes fell, she remembered an injustice. A time his temper had twisted her arm behind her back. A glimpse of his hand up a barely legal model's skirt. A broken glass shattered against a wall. Her doing.

The blood on the floor. The scars she bore. This house was hell in the Hollywood Hills.

Mari closed her eyes and told the truth: "No, I don't feel safe at all."

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After the investigations had concluded (in her favor) and the tabloids lost interest, Mari Sterling left America for the Bahamas.

Nassau was beautiful, it turned out. So was the company.